


I Got You

by newtntommy



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Aftercare, Eddie gets bullied by Henry, First Kiss, M/M, Richie helps him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 02:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12160161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newtntommy/pseuds/newtntommy
Summary: Eddie gets bullied by Henry, and Richie helps him after.





	I Got You

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys like it. Writing hurt Eddie was awful, but I was able to do it. Please comment your thoughts <3

“Hey, where’s Eddie?” Richie asks as he strolls up to his friends. Everyone was here in a circle in front of the school for lunch, except for Eddie. It was weird not hearing him yammering about how unhealthy each cafeteria food was. The group instead was having their own individual conversations. Bill and Beverly were talking quietly in the grass, and Stan, Mike, and Ben were talking a few feet away against a tree. 

Stan looks around and shrugs. “Maybe he got caught up in something. I can go with you to look for him if you want.” 

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just go,” Richie waves him off. He sets his tray of food down, grabbing for a bread roll to take with him. He winks at Bill. “Continue sucking Bev’s face while I’m gone.” 

“Sh-shut it, Richie!” Bill retorts back. He side-eyes Beverly with blushed cheeks, and he refuses to meet anyone’s eyes. Mike laughs in the background, and Beverly blushes and grins in her spot next to Bill. 

Richie makes kissing noises with his lips, and Bill glares at him. “Beep, beep, Richie.” 

The noises die on Richie’s lips, and he sticks his tongue out at Bill childishly. “Fine! I’m going to go find the cute, little bodied version of an anti-bacterial soap bottle, and I’ll be back.” 

He gets a few goodbyes as he walks away, chewing on his roll as he walks across the schoolyard. The fallen leaves from the fall weather crunches under his converse shoes. He walks into the school, peeking around to find the other boy. 

The farther he gets down the hall, he starts to hear loud yelling and banging against metal. Richie finishes off the bread, tensing up as he walks through an empty hallway. Memories of Pennywise lures in his thoughts, and he fears the corner as if he’ll see the clown as soon as he rounds it. 

Another fear creeps up, covering up the other one like a blanket. 

What if Pennywise had Eddie?

Somehow the reality was worse. Richie turns the corner, and he stops dead in his tracks as he stares at what’s in front of him. 

It was much worse because Henry and his goons had Eddie pressed harshly against the lockers. It was worse because they were 100% real, unlike Pennywise. Pennywise lived on fear, and they were no longer afraid of him. Pennywise couldn’t hurt them, especially because he crawled down his hole to come back in the future. 

“Your boyfriend’s name is trashmouth right, faggot?” Henry growls through his teeth. His fingers wrap tight around Eddie’s skinny neck, surely leaving bruises that will probably lead to his mother shoving him in the car to race to the hospital for a numerous amount of checkups. 

Richie’s stomach folds in on him, and his feet turn to stone. The question felt like a punch to the face, causing whiplash, taking him by surprise. 

He can’t be the reason that they’re hurting Eddie. 

Eddie does his best to break free from the hold, shoving hard against the older boy. “Fucking leave me alone, you asshole!” 

Henry snaps at his friend, Patrick, behind him with his free hand. Patrick comes around with an overflowing trashcan that normally sits outside the gym doors. Fear clouds in Eddie’s eyes, struggling hard to get away. “What are you-“

“I’m only trying to show you that you two are meant to be,” Henry tells him with feign kindness. Eddie yelps in surprise when Henry reaches down and yanks the fanny pack clean off his waist and tosses it at his other friend. 

“You are both trash.” 

“ _No!_ ” The exclaim rips out of Richie’s throat as Patrick turns the trashcan over, effectively causing all of the trash inside to land all over Eddie’s small frame. 

Richie runs, forced to watch helplessly as Eddie gets shoved back into his own locker with the door locking him inside. His screams follow him inside, and Richie’s heart clenches at the sound. Henry and the others laugh as they sprint away, surely running away in order to not get caught. 

“Eddie! Eddie, are you okay?” Richie asks through the metal door. He grabs the lock seeing that the locker was in fact Eddie’s, and thankfully, he knows Eddie’s combination. He stares at the boy all the time, and he noticed what numbers Eddie hits every time he opens his locker. 

His brain short-circuits when he jumps back at the sound of Eddie banging hard against the locker door with his fists. He hears whimpering through the door. 

“Eds? Eds, listen to me. You’re going to be okay,” Richie comforts gently. He fumbles with the lock, and he whispers, “I’m going to get you out of there, and soon you’ll be out here chastising us about us not using anti-bacterial wipes on our handlebars.” 

“R-Richie?” 

Richie curses quietly at messing up the combination. “It’s okay, Eds. Your enchanting voice got me messing up here,” Richie softly jokes. His sweaty fingers slip around his grip on the lock. 

“Richie…Please. I can’t breathe. I can’t _br-breathe_ , Richie.” 

Eddie’s voice was so scared, and Richie wants to rip the door off its hinges. “Fuck!” Richie shouts, and then he finally gets the damn door unlocked. He flings it open and sets his eyes on the quivering boy inside. Richie tries to hide his wince, but the smell and sight of the trash that covered the other boy was atrocious. 

Eddie bursts out of the locker, hyperventilating with wide, crazed eyes. His breathing is heavy and loud, and he stands with his limbs out like a hanging scarecrow. His whole body shakes. Condiments, liquids, and other questionable substances drip and fall off Eddie’s shaking form, and Richie has anger growing rapidly inside his chest. 

“Just a second, Eds, don’t worry. I’ll be right back,” Richie mumbles out quickly. He turns around to get to his own locker. Thankfully, his locker was on the opposite wall of Eddie’s, so he didn’t have to go far. He opens it with tense fingers, and he reaches inside to grab the extra inhaler he’s been holding ever since he met Eddie. It’s deep inside his locker behind some books and papers, but it’s still there. 

Eddie’s breathing picks up even more, gaining volume. “R-Richie, please! I-I can’t breathe!” he sobs. 

Richie slams his locker shut and runs back to Eddie. He brings the inhaler to the frantic boy’s lips. He goes to caress Eddie’s cheek, but Eddie jumps back at the touch. Richie tries not to take it personally. He decides to keep his distance, reassuring Eddie that he’s okay, and he needs to breathe. 

It takes longer and more hits than usual from the inhaler to do any good. Eddie was soon able to breathe a little better, but his chest still shakes from his sobbing. Eddie looks down at his body, and his face falls at the repulsive sight of his clothes, legs, and arms. He was still standing there, keeping his arms and legs spread eagle. Tears run down his face, and Richie is on the end of his rope. 

“Come on, Eds,” Richie says as he starts to guide Eddie down the hall. “We’re going to the locker room. We’ll get you all cleaned up again. You’ll be so clean, you’ll be sparkling down the hall.” 

Nothing much takes Richie by surprise. Due to his spontaneous personality, he doesn’t get surprised that many times. He’s more of a ‘let it be’ kind of guy rather than one who ponders on things. 

But Eddie reaching for his hand to hold on to has his stomach doing backflips. The idea that he was an anchor of some sorts for Eddie at a time of crisis has him blushing. It wasn’t exactly new. When they dealt with Pennywise, Eddie was the first thing on his mind when they were attacked, and he likes to know that he was the first thing on Eddie’s mind as well. 

He remembers when Pennywise appeared in the projector, and the first thing he did was pull Eddie towards him. That was the moment he knew what he felt for Eddie was not entirely friendly. There was something more growing in the pit of his heart, and he didn’t know what to do about it. 

It doesn’t take long to get to the gym locker room. When they get inside, Richie is quick to lock the door behind them to keep from being disturbed. He helps Eddie over to the showers, and he leans in to start running the water. The bell above them rings, signaling them that lunch was over and to get to their next class. Both boys ignore it. 

While waiting, Richie looks over at Eddie, who was staring at the garbage layered on his clothes. Richie tests out the water with a finger. “Serious question time,” Richie announces casually. Eddie tenses behind him. 

“Do you think every time Henry breathes, a bunny dies?” 

Eddie is silent. 

“Do you think Satan lost an ounce of evil when Henry was born due to him taking some of his demonic powers with him?” 

Eddie looks over at him with the tiniest bit of a smile on his lips. There is a tear currently rolling down his cheek, and Richie’s breath hitches. 

“Did you know that every tear you shed, another fairy dies?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes, “Shut it, Richie. I’m not in the mood. I want to rip my fucking skin off.” 

“That’s not what your mom said last night,” Richie jokes easily with a wide grin. Eddie flips him the bird. He’s relieved to know that Eddie was slowly coming back to himself. Richie stands up with a clap. “Alright, princess, your shower of cleanliness awaits!” 

“Alright,” Eddie sighs in relief. He begins to pull his shirt over his head. “Don’t look at me.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of ruining your honor and virtue,” Richie responds on instinct. Though, he does take a quick glance to make sure Eddie is able to remove the ruined clothing. He looks away when Eddie only has his underwear to remove. 

“Do you even know what those two things are?” Eddie retorts as he closes the curtain behind him. Richie hears him sigh once the water hits his skin. “I didn’t think those words were in your vocabulary.” 

There’s my Eddie. Richie smiles, feeling at ease now that Eddie was acting like himself again. “I added them to my dictionary when I met you, Eddie spaghetti,” Richie sing-songs.

The room goes quiet, except for the spraying of the water. Richie listens for the rhythm of Eddie’s breathing to make sure the boy was still breathing normally. He scrunches his eyebrows when he hears harsh scratching and rubbing. “Eddie, it’s okay. I’m sure you got most of it by now. Enough to where you can make it home where you can pull out your state of the art disease killing machine,” Richie quips. 

“I do-don’t,” Eddie croaks from behind the curtain. Richie winces when he hears the scratching get louder and more furious. “I think there’s some kind of grease or maybe ketchup that won’t come out of my hair!” 

Richie is up on his feet and shoving the curtain out of his way before he can think too much on it. Eddie shrieks and covers the area between his legs automatically at the sight of Richie. 

“Richie, what the fuck! _Get out!_ ” 

“Why would I look at you when I got better, bigger bits than you?” Richie plays it off with a shrug and a wink. He grabs for Eddie’s hand in his hair with a tsk. “You’re going to scalp yourself, dipshit. I’ll look, okay?” Richie assures the distraught boy. 

If looks could kill, Richie knows he’d be dead, but Eddie didn’t have much of a choice. “Fine,” he hisses out in defeat. 

Richie skims over the hair efficiently, yet quickly. He lightly scrubs at the remaining unknown substance until nothing was left. He says, “You’re good to go. Now hurry up, you’re using all of the clean water America has left.” 

Richie leaves the shower with a quiet ‘thank you’ following after him. He sits back down on the locker room floor, waiting patiently as Eddie shuts off the water. He sees Eddie’s hand reach out to grab for his underwear. 

Richie pushes his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose before speaking. “Hey, um, I don’t know what exactly what happened. I only caught wind of probably half of it…but what happened? He said something about you being trash too?” 

Richie was lying through his teeth, but it was only to keep Eddie from going insane again. He had also heard Henry call him Eddie’s boyfriend, but Eddie didn’t need to know that.   
There’s silence behind the curtain, and Richie bites his lip from saying something else. He was called ‘trashmouth’ for a reason. If he opened his mouth again, he’s sure something without his permission would come streaming out.

Eddie leans to where half of his body was showing from behind the shower curtain. Water droplets drop from the ends of his hair, and he looks over at Richie. “They, uh, Henry called me queer because he thinks you and I are together.” 

Richie’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. He sort of figured that was what Henry had been yammering about, but that just sheds some light on it all. He chuckles lamely, “That’s dumb.” 

Something darkens and deflates in Eddie’s facial features, and Richie quickly speaks up again. “Who would want to kiss little ole’ me? Everyone in their right mind would be in line to kiss you, Eds,” Richie teases.

Eddie’s cheeks redden. “I told you I hate when you call me that,” he says with a small voice. 

Richie leans back against the wall, slowly making his way closer to the smaller boy. “Do you?” he asks with a serious tone, though he keeps a smile stitched to his lips for back up. He has his theories, but he doesn’t want to scare Eddie into another attack.

Eddie ignores the question, and Richie tries to think what that could mean. “Nobody would want to kiss someone who probably smells like complete trash right now.” 

“Nah,” Richie tells him without thinking. “Sure, you kind of do, but you also smell like Eddie.” 

Eddie steps out of the shower with his eyes stuck on Richie. “What do I smell like?” he asks with confusion swimming in his eyes. 

The atmosphere of the room was changing drastically, and Richie was torn between staying and fleeing. His words were straying from friendly to something else quickly, and he doesn’t know how to shut himself up. He wished his own conscious had a mouth to say ‘Beep, beep, Richie’, because he is 100 percent sure it’d be screaming it at the top of his lungs right now. 

Eddie was looking at him with such interest tied with vulnerability like every word Richie was saying was a lifeline. Richie has always felt powerless under Eddie’s gaze. Nobody stole his entire attention like Eddie did. He could be ranting or making up some hilarious story with a funny plot twist, but then he’ll notice Eddie looking at him, and he switches from confident to uncertainty and stuttering like stuttering Bill. 

On the other hand, if he had just started ranting about some story or joke, he’ll have his full attention on Eddie. He doesn’t know what it is, but he loves the idea of impressing Eddie, or making the other boy laugh. Eddie’s approval has him weak in the knees, wanting nothing more than getting some sort of reaction out of him. That’s why 75 percent of the time he was directing his jokes at Eddie. 

“You just…you smell like, Eddie, I don’t know,” Richie mumbles. He runs his fingers through his hair nervously. “I don’t know how to explain it. You smell like you. You smell clean with a mix of outside spring air. You smell like familiarity. I don’t know, but what I do know, is that if I were to close my eyes, I would always know it’s you right next to me.” 

Eddie was looking at him in shock and wonder, and Richie’s conscious finally speaks up to tell him to run away. He parts his lips to talk his way out of whatever hole he just fucking dug for himself, but then Eddie breaks out in a smile, and he gives a light shove to Richie’s shoulder. 

“You sweet talker, you,” Eddie teases with a shake of his head. 

Richie gawks and retaliates by pushing Eddie’s hand away. “That’s exactly what your mom said last night.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “And you lost it,” he bites out with another weak shove. 

“That’s _not_ what your mom said last night,” Richie replies with a wide smirk. This begins a small shoving fight with light banter. Richie is pushing Eddie’s shoves, or Eddie is dodging Richie’s shoves. Richie doesn’t know how it happened, but suddenly he’s got both of Eddie’s hands in his. Sarcastic, biting remarks die on both of their lips, and neither boy breaks eye contact. 

He doesn’t know how, but his hands are both numb and shaky. Eddie’s light brown eyes are pinning him in the spot, and his brain yells at him to do something. Sarcastic comment? Light humor? Another mom joke? Run-

His breath is stolen out of his lungs when lips press against his. 

His eyes are wide in shock, and he stares at Eddie’s closed eyelids. He follows along and closes his eyes too. He lets go of Eddie’s hands in order to pull him closer to him. He has one shy hand on Eddie’s hip and the other one cupping his neck. He senses two hands between their chests, but he doesn’t mind. He’s too busy trying to figure out what to do with his lips. 

He experiments. He tilts his head, finding a better angle to where their noses aren’t pushed against each other. He presses slightly harder against Eddie’s lips, and Eddie copies him. He smiles into the kiss, loving how incredibly soft the shorter boy’s lips are. 

The kiss is sloppy and amateur since kissing was new to both boys, but they tried their best. There are shy, innocent touching – the boys trying to accustom to the new territory.   
Eddie breaks apart from the kiss, but he keeps his hands tangled in Richie’s shirt. Richie grins. 

“I’m only stopping now because I’m embarrassed knowing that someone is going to ask how was my first kiss, and I have to tell them that I was kissing another boy in my damn middle school locker room in my fucking underwear,” Eddie groans with fake irritation. 

Richie giggles. “If I had known this was going to happen, I would’ve set up some candles. Maybe some music playing in the background.” 

Eddie scoffs, “Yeah, I’m sure you’re incredibly romantic.” 

“I can be whatever you want me to be, baby,” Richie quickly responds with his eyebrows wagging up and down. In the back of his mind, he’s terrified to wonder how much he’d exactly do for the shorter boy.

“ _Oh my God_ ,” Eddie groans with a roll of his eyes. Though, Richie can see humor in them too. 

Eddie falls short when he turns around and sees his clothes on the floor. He scowls, “I am not wearing those. I’d rather light myself on fire.” 

“You can wear mine,” Richie offers with a shrug. 

Eddie twists around and stares at Richie. “What?”

“I said you can wear my clothes,” Richie repeats. “No big deal. I can find clothes in this school, Eds. I’m sure Stan has an extra t-shirt, and I bet Bill has some extra gym shorts I can wear.” 

Eddie stares at him with an aghast look in his eye. 

Richie awkwardly picks at his fingernails, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “Which one makes more sense: you running around in your underwear, or me running around in my underwear?”

Clarity seems to return to Eddie because he finally stops looking at Richie like he has three heads. “I guess that’s good reasoning,” he whispers. “Thanks, Richie. That means a lot.”

Richie smiles, and he walks over to Eddie and places a kiss on his forehead. He can think about it later on just how far he’d go to please Eddie. He’ll think about it later because right now Eddie is looking at him with those earth-stilling brown eyes. He can hardly breathe until Eddie turns around to throw away his ruined clothes. 

So, he does end up running around the school searching for clothes. What else is new? Just another thing to add to the list of ‘guess what Richie is doing’. 

He snickers as he adds something else to the list for the future. 

Eddie.


End file.
